ABSTRACT
At least until the mid-twentieth century, anyone with an informed opinion on mime had also to have an opinion on Deburau. After his death in 1846, his style of Pierrot did not remain unchanged, but neither did it vanish. It became either the matrix on which interpretations of Pierrot were constructed and adapted, or else on the contrary it was the source of a reaction against established conventions. This chapter demonstrates how the seeds for adaptation and even rejection are to be found in Deburau’s interpretation of the role much more than is generally thought. Champfleury’s long campaign for Realism in art began with his Realist pantomimes whose aesthetic has its roots in the burlesque realism of Deburau. In the approach by the poets Banville, Laforgue and Giraud to the constraints of poetic diction there is a fascination with Deburau’s enduring principle of muteness. The fin-de-siècle Pierrot was a conscious response to the model inherited from Deburau. Reputedly one of the greatest films in French cinema, Les Enfants du paradis, redeploys the images and symbolic values surrounding Deburau to express mid-twentieth-century concerns. The most famous mime actor in history, Marcel Marceau, described himself as a ‘Pierrot for the twentieth century’ and combined ‘yesterday’s themes with today’s techniques’.
